Hey I'm new here and have a few questions. Please take the time to answer as I bet you were in my position once (before you were all elevated to a supreme standing!).

OK, so here's my problem... I have started the lessons on Hiragana on this site. I'm only 2 characters into it so far (only coz I'm taking the time to do it all thoroughly!). But I want to know, does this lesson teach me how to put the characters together to make words. As far as I can tell each of those characters gives a different sound and you make words by putting 2 or more of the characters together. I have flicked through several of the lessons to get an idea of its format etc and all I can see in the way of actual words are the examples given along with each character.

Have I missed something or do I learn about that in another part of the site, coz from what I see this only teaches me the characters, and not what they mean...

Thank you in advance if you help me out, I really want to learn this and get it right.

Chill out, the chance of someone posting that you're a dumb noob who should beat it is only 3 to 1. löl jk. Hiragana is mostly used for particles and verb endings and the like so you don't really learn a lot of vocabulary written in it. Most of ur vocab will be written in Kanji or Katakana. Therefore, check out the Kanji section to learn some vocab.

I've got to disagree, learning hiragana first helps you understand the sounds of Japanese, when/if you start studying from books solely written in Japanese the kanji (should), always have the reading for it in hiragana.

My teacher whilst I was in Japan taught the class hiragana first, (it's surprising how much vocab. you can learn by doing it this way...

eviljoker7075 wrote:
Thanks... ok so let me get this right, Kanji is also just a set of characters like Hiragana... but Hiragana is more about the sounds, and Kanji are characters that represent words...?

You can look at Hiragana like an alphabet, where each character has only one pronunciation. But Kanjis can have several pronunciations so watch out. Every word can be written using Hiragana, however most words are written using Kanji, a mix of Kanji and Hiragana, or Katakana.

mmm... that's why I want to learn this language, it seems like a suitablr challenge!!

I was planning on learning Hiragana and Katakana and then later on Kanji, will that be ok do you think?

And just to confirm, if I do all the Hiragana lessons on this site I will know all the sounds of that "alphabet" but I wont understand anything written in it (well some stuff as examples are given in the lessons) just what it sounds like...?